“Dark Blue Thread”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers

For “Dark Blue Thread” I thought what if an expat writer found out that his Malay wife was cheating on him? Although my ex-wife, whom I loosely based my character on, as far as I know never cheated on me, the idea stuck. The story went on to be published four times (while we were still married), under its original title, “The Watermark”.

I used the Penang terrace house that I was living in back then as the setting, which made it easy since it was familiar territory. When it first appeared in The Her World Annual 92, the main character’s name was Dennis. A year later, when it was published in Singapore, I had changed the name to Eric, then to Eric Heywood in the first Lovers and Strangers collection, and back to Eric in London Magazine (January 1995). Although I liked the name Eric, I felt that the name Alan better suited the character, so I took the opportunity to change the name once again for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Alan’s wife also went through several name changes. She started out as Fatimah, then Sheela, and finally Salina in the original collection. Thankfully, Madison, our cat’s real name, remained the same.

The story was first published in the present tense, but soon afterwards I switched to past tense, which I felt worked better for this story. The biggest change was the ending. After cutting back on the various excesses in the early versions, for Lovers and Strangers, I settled on:

“Although he knew it was time to ask her about the letters, he was afraid of the answers. Afraid she might leave him. His crying woke Madison and she began to stir. He tried to hold her back, but she bounded over him and rushed for the opened door.”

While I was revisiting the story, I felt I needed a final confrontation with the wife. So I had her return to the house on the pretense that she had forgotten her office desk key. To set up this final confrontation, I added a lot more details about their backstory, their life in Malaysia, the financial sacrifices he had made, and the options that he was now facing.

It was becoming clear to me that the story wasn’t so much about “the watermark”; it was the dark blue thread, the main symbol of the story, too, which I felt would make a better, less confusing title. In Malaysia, bond paper isn’t all that common. The thread had also served as a constant reminder as to how fragile his life had become. Once he severed the thread with that knife, he was ready to face reality, no matter the consequences.

When the wife did come back, I had him slap her, which had not only surprised him, but also me as the writer. Until that very moment, I never thought he’d slap her. It was not something I was capable of doing, or would do, but for Alan, it was something he had to do. He had to make a point, even if that point backfired by losing his wife for good. But he had to take that risk. At stake was his very existence in Malaysia. Then in that final dialogue, he finally said what he had been holding back for the past two weeks.

The new ending thus became:

“He walked past [Madison] and went up to his office. He grabbed the paper. He didn’t care which way the watermark went. It really didn’t matter.”

With the expanded ending and all the additions I made, the story nearly doubled in length. For the MPH version, I added a couple more lines at the ending. I didn’t want the emphasis to fall on the watermark, but on him, as the writer and on his marriage:

“He began to type, but when he came to the letter p, he paused. Who in the hell was this P? Was it someone he knew? He decided right there and then that he didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter. He wanted to put these last two weeks behind him. He typed some more. Tears began to fall, but he kept on typing.”

This was the effect I was going for; he didn’t know what was going to happen to their marriage, now that she knew that he knew. It would all depend on her. She may leave him for this other man, or she way give up her lover and stay with her husband, and somehow they would work things out, whether returning to America or remained in Malaysia.

Note, I had now written in that final paragraph “It didn’t matter,” twice, knowing full well, the opposite was true.

As a footnote, I saw hope in this story. Hope in my own marriage, too, but alas that too came to an end, and it was time to move on. Unlike the character in the story, who was contemplating returning to America, that was never one of my options. I had decided to stay put in Malaysia. In real life, we had another factor to consider, a child, who came after the story was written. After our divorce, we shared raising our son (I had him during the week and she had him during the weekends) until my new job took me to Sarawak. My ex-wife got Madison, who was seventeen when she passed away, but in “Dark Blue Thread”, she still lives on, waiting to be fed.

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie. Here's a link to the French blog set up by the publisher Éditions GOPE.

Here is a review in: The Star and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

“Lovers and Strangers”: The Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

The original title for “Lovers and Strangers” was “Miss Valerie”, but while trying to come up with a unifying title for the collection I came up with Lovers and Strangers since some stories were about lovers and others about strangers. I then went through each story and worked in either the word “lover” or “stranger”. For this particular story I worked in the dialogue between Glasgow and Valerie that produced the line, “Last night we made love, so we’re lovers and strangers,” thus linking it both to the story and the title of the collection.

I began the idea for the story “Lovers and Strangers” by playing ‘what-if.’ What if a Chinese woman found out that her husband was having an affair and to get back at him, she decided to have her own affair. So she set her sights on the unsuspecting writer, Jason Glasgow, an American based in Singapore. To add another level to the story I had him haunted by the suicide of a former Chinese lover, Rebecca, that he feels responsible for.

In the original version published in both Femina (India) and in the first collection, the story was told from Valerie’s point of view. When I revised it for Lovers and Strangers Revisited (Silverfish), I not only changed the title back to “Miss Valerie”, but also changed the viewpoint from Valerie to Glasgow. In doing so, I had to change the entire story from beginning to the end. I did keep a lot of the dialogue, particularly Valerie’s. Because of that, even though the viewpoint was Glasgow, someone I could identify with, the dialogue, as has been pointed out to me on numerous occasions, is very balanced. In fact, she gets all the best lines and really puts Glasgow, deservingy, in his place!

The story originally ended with Valerie being back in Penang and discovering that she was pregnant. For her this was pure delight since she’s always wanted to have a baby. It’s also the ultimate revenge on her philandering husband. But this time I wanted to push the story further. I wanted Valerie to follow in the footsteps of Rebecca, which was Glasgow’s worst fear. Then to add to that fear, he now had this baby that he didn’t want and was expected to raise.

To tie the new beginning to the new end, I played with the idea, or the imagery of a ghost. For Glasgow, when he first saw Valerie he thought he was seeing the ghost of Rebecca. Throughout the story, Valerie would tease him about this. She also vowed to come back to Singapore to “haunt” him. She even named their child, Rebecca.

The story also doubled in length and became the longest story in the collection, so I made it the final story, replacing “Mat Salleh”. I reshuffled the placement of most of the stories in Lovers and Strangers Revisited. Then I kept the order for the MPH version but then added the two new stories to the end.

For the MPH collection, at the urging of the editor, I did change the title “Miss Valerie” back to “Lovers and Strangers”. I also spent a lot of time rewriting the new ending, showing that it did take him some time to come around to the fact that he had this daughter living in Penang. But first he needed to reconcile himself with Valerie’s death; only then was he able to contemplate shifting his future from being a confirmed bachelor to a single father.

It has been suggested by several writer friends that I could turn this story into novel by starting with Glasgow’s first love affair with Rebecca. Perhaps, in the future I will do that.

As a note, a young lady from Iran who was doing her graduate work in Malaysia, was so taken with this story, identifying closely with Miss Valerie, that she was quite upset with her death, and she insisted on talking to me about this story at lenght, so we set an appointment. This was the second time that someone really, personally, took my story to heart, a great learning experience for me about the power writers have, so it's important to get the story just right, your readers depend on it.

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie. Here's a link to the French blog set up by the publisher Éditions GOPE.

Here is a review in The Star and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I